Conventional general-use drawing tools are configured such that they include pattern part windows in which pattern parts are selected by users, canvas onto which drawing is performed with the selected pattern parts being dragged and dropped, and palettes in which pattern part attributes are changed. The number of the palettes equals to the number of changeable attributes that the pattern parts have. An example of the conventional drawing tools is disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication 21,377/1998.
In the conventional drawing tools, any one of the pattern parts is selected from the pattern part window using a mouse, and the selected pattern part is placed in a desired position of the canvas with a drag-and-drop operation by the mouse. The placed pattern part attributes are generally predetermined ones as a set of standards, or the ones that have been selected and stored in the last operation. For example, in a state in which a red color has been selected in the color palette and a thick line has been selected in the line thickness palette in the last operation, when a quadrangular pattern part is selected in the pattern part window using the mouse, and then dragged and dropped on the canvas by the mouse, a quadrangular pattern is drawn onto the canvas, in which the painted color is red and the outline is thick.
In a case in which attributes need to be changed, the attributes are changed by palette selecting operations corresponding to each attribute, for example, a pattern part whose attribute needs to be changed, is selected using the mouse, and in the state in which the pattern has been selected, a painting color is then selected, if needed, from the color palette and an outline thickness is selected from the line thickness palette. For example, in a case in which a quadrangular pattern painted red on the canvas with a thick outline is changed to the one painted yellow with a thin outline, the operation must be performed in such a way that the quadrangular pattern is selected using the mouse at first, and then the yellow color is selected from the color palette in this state, and the thin line is selected from the line thickness palette.
In the conventional drawing tools, patterns are drawn onto the canvas by repeating these series of operations. That is, the conventional drawing tools have separate operations, which are the drag-and-drop operations that determine the positions of the patterns drawn and the palette selecting operations that determine how to draw the patterns.
In the conventional drawing tools, as described above, drawing operations have been performed by repeating operations in such a way that after having selected the pattern parts using the mouse and once placed them on the canvas by the drag-and-drop operations, their attributes are then changed. Therefore, in the conventional tools, in order to draw a pattern part, drag-and-drop operations for selecting desired pattern parts and for determining their positions, must be performed plural times, which equal to the number of the palettes corresponding to attributes to be changed; consequently, there has been a problem in that the operations are very troublesome.
An objective of the present invention, which has been made to solve the foregoing problem accordingly, is to provide a drawing tool and a drawing method in which operations for selecting and determining the attributes are simplified.